I bet they looked at the usage rate for this PW, saw that it was more than likely almost zero, and went from there.
Very much this. A 10-year-old PW that a maybe a handful of people use maybe one obscure deck in maybe one low-profile event, versus creating a version that has better fidelity to the actual paper card (and maybe generates some sales)? I’d think that’s a very sensible change to make, especially in context of other complaints that there are already too many PWs to scroll through. I’m sure they have the data from the Garruk redesign on how many people were using it before the change, and how many people who complained actually stopped playing/spending because of the change.
I would love to see if they do decide to recreate the old PW’s abilities into a new PW, how many people take the time to buy/use gold to obtain what is clearly a substandard profile. My guess is practically none.